biscuits & gravy hot pocket

Finally, a piece of food I made that actually looks good enough to eat. Thanks, VSCOcam iPhone app! 
   
     In keeping with this month's theme about Lay's Do Us a Flavor contest, I made a biscuits and gravy hot pocket. The gravy is the Pumpkin Spice Gravy I used in a previous video along with the sausages I used to make said gravy. The biscuit dough is just the type you get from a can at the supermarket.

     Up until this recipe, I have never worked with biscuit dough. I thought it would be easy to flatten out with a rolling pin. It flattened but it was really hard to work with in terms of shaping it into anything other than a biscuit. You definitely need a dry surface to flatten and form the biscuits on, otherwise your job will be a lot harder.

     I felt like I was playing some sort of wrestling game with an inanimate object(the biscuit dough). That's why I had to slap the Hot Pocket- I was not only frustrated but I just wanted the Hot Pocket to hold its shape. Slapping the Hot Pocket is optional.

It turned out that some of the Hot Pockets ending up looking like calzones. It was impossible for me to fold the biscuit dough lengthwise due to the shape of the chicken sausage pieces. So I had to fold it from the top to the bottom, hence the calzone shape.

I tried a different technique this time. I fully cooked all the Hot Pockets and the ones I didn't eat I just put in the freezer. When I wanted to eat them, I would let the Hot Pocket(s) thaw out at room temperature for 4 hours. Then you heat them up in the microwave for a minute, the way nature intended Hot Pockets to be cooked. Unless your using them in a meatloaf. In that case, the oven heat is only going to heat them up anyway.

     In the video, I used two lasagna pans. Let me explain my logic. I didn't want to make 8 Hot Pockets because it was already hard to shape 1, let alone 8. So I made 5 Hot Pockets and I used a second lasagna pan to bake 3 biscuits. I don't believe in wasting perfectly good food, like extra biscuit dough. Biscuits also go really well with some jelly on top of them.

Those biscuits were used in the photo I took of the Pumpkin Spice Gravy. Because gravy looks pretty sad without something to pour it on, if you don't have a gravy boat.

You will need:

For the cooking vessels:

A countertop or wooden board
A rolling pin or beer bottle
2 lasagna pans
Nonstick cooking spray

For the Hot Pockets:

1 can of biscuit dough
1-2 chicken sausage links cut into half-inch wide pieces(I used pumpkin spice sausage but you could use whatever flavor you want)
10 tbsp. of some sort of gravy(I used Pumpkin Spice Gravy)
Pinch of salt
5 tsp. of black pepper
5 tsp. of cinnamon

1. Open the can of the biscuit dough, as per the instructions on the can.
2. Take the biscuit dough out of the can.
3. The biscuit dough should break apart into 8 different circular pieces.
4. Flatten one of the circular pieces on a countertop or wooden board using a rolling pin or beer bottle. This is going to be tricky, as the dough will have a tendency to stick to the rolling pin. In that case, just separate the dough from the rolling pin and continue flattening.
5. Once your dough is flattened, put 4-5 half-inch pieces of chicken sausage on the bottom half of the flattened dough.
6. Pour 2 tbsp. of your gravy on top of the chicken sausage pieces.
7. Fold the dough from the top down. Make sure you fold it so that no chicken sausage pieces are sticking out or falling out.
8. Poke the Hot Pocket with a fork to let the steam out as it's baking The dough is going to rise and you don't want exploding Hot Pockets in the oven.
9. Spray one lasagna pan with nonstick cooking spray.
10. Put the Hot Pocket in the lasagna pan, making sure the Hot Pocket doesn't fall apart as you're doing that.
11. Repeat steps 4-10 five more times.

Steps 12-13 are optional:

12. Spray the second lasagna pan with nonstick cooking spray.
13. Put 3 of the raw biscuits into that lasagna pan to make biscuits.

14. Sprinkle the Hot Pockets with the salt, black pepper, and cinnamon.
15. Bake both the biscuits and the Hot Pockets in the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 14-17 minutes.
16. Bon appetit!